Thursday, October 1, 2009

Retrospective Tim

(After the game today it was announced that Sabean and Bochy will be retained for next year at least...I'll leave that tidbit to the comment crew. For me (as always) it is all about Timmy.)

The final home game of 2009 ended just as it should have: Tim Lincecum delivered another quality start and our boys won easily, 7-3 against the lowly snakes. Today's effort was especially crisp and if not for some sloppy relief (and perhaps a bit of over-managing) it could have easily been a shutout. Never the less, seven innings, TWO HITS! (both singles), 2 runs, 2 walks and seven strikeouts is not too shabby. That kind of performance is what we have come to expect and Tim did not disappoint. Hopefully, my Bro can provide some first hand observations later this evening.

This post would not be complete without some serious number-love directed toward The Freak. Today was win #15, a drop from the 18 of last year. Likewise, the 225 innings is down two from last year, however it could be argued that Tim actually improved in all other ways. Here's a quick look at his trends in some of the key stats:

3 comments:

It was a wonderful game. The weather was gorgeous, we had good seats (I took my son Andrew). I thought I'd try the club level after Jon's report on it. Nice, but it made me feel republican.Tim dominated. The perfect game ended when he drilled Young in the head. Semi-scary. I never know what to think about what's going on until Kruk & Kuip are telling me what's what. The same for some hoo hah about people arguing with the umps and getting tossed. I don't know what the hell that was all about.The no hitter ended in the fifth, but the next guy almost immediately hit into a DP so it was like the hit never happened.The complete game ended in the 8th when Tim put the first 2 guys on. Then Howry loaded the bases, then Runzler blew the shutout while cleverly keeping his ERA perfect. All 3 runs he let score belonged to somebody else.But it didn't matter because we had a 7 run lead.The offensive star was Torres, who was a double shy of the cycle. His homer was a beaut. It clanked off the port side of the fair pole, about halfway up. It would have been way out into the cove.The other sweet part of the game was the little love-fest for Aurelia. He went hitless, but most of his outs were of the "productive" variety, moving runners up. He must have felt strange taking a curtain call after making his final out of the day.I have mixed feelings about the dude. What has he done for me lately? And you can be sure his name is on that infamous "list" of steroid users. His peak years matched the peak years of he-who-must-not-be-named (Barry Bonds).

He's a better pitcher this year. If you like FIP, his career arc looks like this: 3.63, 2.62, 2.34.

If you like tRA, it goes like this: 3.66, 3.22, 2.85.

Compared to last season, he gave up fewer flyballs and line drives while increasing his ground balls. While he struck out slightly fewer guys he walked a lot fewer. His WAR went from 7.5 to 8.3 (only Zack Greinke is higher at 9.1) which is Pujols (8.4) country.

He's amazing. It is hard to imagine him getting better, but I expect that he will.